How well do you need to know a teacher to coach them well?
I found myself pondering that question after reading Randi Brown’s Edutopia article on supporting teacher growth through trusting relationships. Brown describes two threads that exist in a coaching conversation. One is visible—the lesson plan, instructional strategies, student engagement, assessment results, and the teacher’s goals. The other is less visible. It includes the teacher’s confidence, expertise, previous experiences, concerns, and perhaps their nervousness about receiving feedback. Brown calls this second layer the “invisible thread.”
That distinction connects strongly with my belief that effective coaching begins with the teacher’s agenda. Knowing the teacher’s agenda is more than knowing what a teacher wants to accomplish. It’s also knowing why it matters to them and how it connects to some of those invisible threads like concerns, past experiences, and confidence.
Knowing how to ask questions is important. Knowing enough about the teacher to recognize when to probe, when to pause, when to challenge, and when to simply listen may be even more important. Perhaps trust in coaching grows from the teacher experiencing, “You know me well enough to coach me.”
“We don’t ask questions because we have good questions. We ask questions because we’ve listened carefully enough to know what question the teacher is ready to consider.”
Trust isn’t simply a prerequisite for coaching; trust develops as teachers experience that the coach knows them and uses that knowledge respectfully. That doesn’t mean that knowing a teacher leads a coach to avoid challenging conversations. In fact, knowing may make challenge more productive.
Joellen Killion’s distinction between light and heavy coaching provides an interesting lens here. Light coaching tends to focus on providing support, resources, encouragement, and assistance. Heavy coaching pushes more directly toward examining beliefs, assumptions, decisions, and their impact on student learning. Knowing the teacher and their agenda helps a coach recognize when support is called for and when challenge might generate important learning.
The question isn’t simply, “Should I coach light or coach heavy?” Perhaps an earlier question is, “What do I know—and what do I still need to find out—about this teacher?”
A teacher asking, “Can you give me some ideas for getting students to participate more?” has made a request. But the request doesn’t necessarily reveal the teacher’s agenda. Before offering strategies, I may need to find out more.
What does greater participation look like to this teacher? Why is it important now? What is the teacher noticing about particular students? How confident is the teacher that change is possible? Is the teacher looking for a quick strategy or wondering about something deeper concerning student ownership of learning?
Those questions aren’t delaying the coaching. They are the coaching. Finding out isn’t something that happens before the coaching conversation. It is part of the coaching conversation. In asking those questions, a coach begins to discover some of the invisible thread that can inform what happens next.
A coach exploring an invisible thread might proceed like this:
Teacher: Can you give me some ideas for getting more students involved in our class discussions?
Coach: Tell me what you’re noticing that’s causing you to think about participation.
Teacher: It’s mostly the same five or six kids who voluntarily jump into a discussion. I can get everyone participating if I call on them, but that’s not really what I want. I want them to want to contribute. I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve created too much dependence on me.
Coach: So, it’s more than getting students involved. You want students assuming more responsibility for contributing to the learning that’s happening in the room.
Teacher: Yeah. I don’t want to have to keep pulling responses from them. When I ask a question, most of them wait. They know that eventually I’ll call on someone, or I’ll fill the silence myself.
Coach: You’re wondering if some of what you’re doing to increase participation may actually be reinforcing their dependence on you.
Teacher: Yes. That’s the part I’m struggling with. I’ve always thought that keeping the discussion moving was my responsibility. Silence is uncomfortable. If no one answers, I start thinking that my question wasn’t clear or they don’t understand. So, I step in to get things on track.
Coach: So, stepping back may mean sitting with some discomfort—some silence and uncertainty—while students figure out that you aren’t going to do the work for them.
Teacher: That’s probably true. I think I’d have to get comfortable being uncomfortable for a while.
Coach: Your students may need to do the same thing. What might you do differently that would communicate to students that participation in the discussion is their responsibility rather than yours?
Teacher: I could stop calling on students so quickly. Maybe give them time to talk with a partner first. I could also tell them directly that I want them responding to each other rather than waiting for me to manage the conversation.
Coach: You’ve identified some possibilities to try. What if I observed the students’ responses as you try them out and added my observations to yours? We could see if things are moving in the direction you want.
The invisible thread wasn’t apparent in the teacher’s opening request. What initially sounded like a request for participation strategies gradually revealed the teacher’s desire for greater student responsibility, her concern that her own actions might be creating dependence, and her discomfort with the silence that changing those actions might require.
So, how well do you need to know a teacher in order to coach them well?
What a coach really needs is a commitment to be continually finding out. Each coaching conversation provides an opportunity to know more—to discover what the teacher values, what they are working toward, what concerns them, what they are confident about, where they are uncertain, and what they may be ready to question. That knowing helps us decide when to listen, when to probe, when to support, and when to challenge.
And each time teachers experience a coach seeking to understand before responding, another piece of the invisible thread becomes visible. Trust grows. Maybe the most important message a coach can communicate is simply, “I want to keep getting to know you so that the coaching we do together matters to you.”
Coaching begins with knowing. And knowing begins—and continues—with finding out.
